


Djinn Queen

by KassieProphet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: BAMF!Castiel, Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Season/Series 13, Season/Series 13 Speculation, Supernatural - Freeform, season 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 04:31:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14205123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KassieProphet/pseuds/KassieProphet
Summary: Castiel goes to acquire fruit from the tree of life and encounters more than he bargained for.





	Djinn Queen

Castiel is jetlagged. He is billions of years old—he was once able to fold time & space!—but an airplane has foiled him. His Grace thrums unhappily—it wants to reestablish his vessel’s circadian rhythm—but Castiel has the feeling he shouldn’t be expending energy so close to his task. Who knows what tribulations he will encounter. Could be another set of clay warriors. Could be a giant snake. Could be Chuck casually reading the paper. Who knows really, with the way these things usually go. Castiel has learned not to have concrete expectations.

***

As Castiel swipes at the djinn in front of him while another tries to grab him around the waist, he realizes that he did have expectations after all. He was expecting maybe a mythical beast to defeat; or a trial of riddles; a booby-trapped walk of faith (and damn, he’s watched that movie with Dean too many times if that’s the expectation his otherworldly brain has conjured up); but certainly not a rouge pack of djinn who took up residence because they were bored and they could.

“I can’t wait to taste your dreams, Angel,” the one currently grappling at his waist hisses into his ear as he licks it.

Castiel swings an elbow back into the djinn’s gut as he flips his angel blade and throws it at the one dancing in front of him. The blade pierces its throat, and it gargles pathetically around the blue-black lifeblood it aspirates on.

The elbow wasn’t as effective,and Castiel feels himself being pulled down. He’s deadlier with his angel blade, but without it he’s just deadly. He manages to wriggle around and place a smiting hand on the djinn who was behind him…but he trips over the feet of another djinn Castiel had—sliced? stabbed? (he can’t really recall all of the ways he’s dispatched the djinn at this point)—and he finds himself on the ground. On his back.

Again.

All these years and he still cannot balance right without the aid of his wings.

He only has a moment to berate his clumsiness before two more djinn appear at his opponent’s side. Castiel spits blood out of his mouth. He’d bitten his tongue on impact. He waits for them to close in before he rolls away from their outstretched, grabby hands. Blindly he reaches behind him and—blessedly—his fingers curl around the hilt of his blade. Castiel swipes out in an arc and manages to wound two of his attackers, who hiss and jump away.

The third—the pest who has consistently gotten the closest to Castiel’s vessel—grabs him by the lapels of his trench coat and hoists him up. The djinn’s smile bleeds across his face revealing his sharp teeth, his breath an acrid breeze across Castiel’s face. Cas stomps on the djinn’s instep and gives him a patented Dean Winchester head-butt, and the creature stumbles back.

The other two have collected themselves, and—with Mr. Too-Close-for-Comfort—begin circling Castiel. Cas just rolls his shoulders and chuckles. On his feet, angel blade in his grasp, he has the upper hand.

His laugh must have unnerved them somewhat because they are glancing at each other. They start conversing in their sibilant language (one he’s heard Sam refer to more than once as Parseltongue and would not be dissuaded against the inaccuracy of that label). Castiel doesn’t know if the djinn do it because think he can’t understand them or because they know he can.

“I am unsure of this.”

“He is bloodied, but does not appear to be tiring.”

“He has already sent six of us to Purgatory. Do we wish to join our siblings there?”

“You know,” interjects Castiel, “if you just give me some fruit—as I asked when I first arrived—I’d be happy to be on my way and spare the rest.”

Their attention snaps back to him and they hiss in unison.

Castiel flips his blade a few times and raises his eyebrow. “Or I could cut a swath through you and let you join the ‘party’ in Purgatory.” Flip, flip. “I was fighting wars before your alpha was even a glimmer in Eve’s eye, but sure—test me combat.”

They hesitate knowing the truth behind his words, but indignant about being called out over their battle prowess. A look passes between the three of them and their stances relax.

Mr. Too-Close speaks at him, “You will speak with our Malikah.”

Castiel straightens but doesn’t relax. “Do I have your word I will come to her unharmed?”

The djinn smiles at him, baring his razors again. “We will bring you to her as you are. What happens after is none of our doing.”

***

The djinn queen is sitting in an obviously handmade wicker chair under the tree, one leg slung lazily over an armrest. She considers Castiel with a look that wouldn’t melt butter. She gestures airily at his ‘escorts’ and they leave his side to join with the others in their pack. Her face is graced with a wicked smile.

“Are you a present?”

“No, Malikah. I am here on a…quest of sorts.”

She swings her leg down and leans forward, raising her brows at him.

“And am I not the treasure you seek?”

Castiel squints. The devil is loose, a Prince of Hell sits its throne, a war-torn angel army threatens to invade this Earth, and he’s getting hit on.

Again.

“Your…uh…beauty is a…treasure indeed. But…um—”

The djinn huffs out an amused laugh and waves at him to stop.

“I know what you seek. It is what every being who comes here seeks.” She throws a thumb over her shoulder and Castiel sees the pile of bones.

Lovely.

She rises from her chair languidly and saunters over to him.

“But you, Angel. For you I require a very different price. Hmm. No, a favor is more like. Will trade a favor for a bit of fruit?”

Her hand comes up and she trails a tattooed finger along his stubbled jawline.

“Um. Ok,” he sputters.

The pack of djinn on the sidelines titter.

***

Castiel is sitting in another wicker chair. He shifts self-consciously under the weight of the flowers on his head the necklaces of teeth—of all kinds—wound around his neck. Three female djinn are painting his forearms (he’d staunchly insisted that he’d keep his shirt on, but his sleeves rolled up), neck, and bare feet. He feels naked without his trenchcoat.

“What exactly is—” he starts, but the djinn painting his left arm shushes him.

“Don’t move. You’ll ruin the line.”

“Ok.”

Castiel surveys the area. The pack of dijnn are mostly standing about in clumps talking animatedly with each other. Even with his heightened hearing and understanding of the language, he can’t seem make anything out—the sounds are too breathy and too many of them overlap—so when they all quiet, Castiel perks up.

The three djinn attending him stand and move away (the one who spoke to him earlier snaps at him, “do not move too much before it dries!”) and a djinn he didn’t fight appears on a platform. The djinn begins to sing a capella—there are no words, but the melody is ethereal and heartrending. Hand movements accompany the notes, but Castiel can’t tell if it’s a language he doesn’t speak, or if the movements are of the signer’s own making.

He leans over to the closet djinn, “So do I, um—" but he is cut off with an aggravated hiss.

“Do not interrupt!”

So Castiel sinks back into the chair. He starts a little when the pack of djinns start clapping and stomping. At first it seems uncoordinated, but after a few beats he realizes there’s a cadence and pattern to it, with some djinns clapping and others stomping in turns. As the song and beat pick up, a cadre of djinn break free and start wheeling and spinning and slapping and clapping at each other’s hands in a mesmerizing sort of ballet.

There is a cry—it doesn’t appear to be a part of the song—and Castiel sees the djinn queen approaching. She is decked out in her own set of flowers and creature teeth. There’s a certain sort of thorny beauty to her that reminds him of Meg Masters.

Another djinn appears before Castiel suddenly and holds a carafe of sweet-smelling…something…out to him.

“Now. You drink now,” the djinn says in English. Castiel hesitates, but the djinn is insistent, “You not displease her.”

So Castiel accepts the carafe and takes a sip. The attendant makes an aggrieved noise and tips the bottom of the carafe so that Cas is forced to drink down the sudden onset of liquid on reflex before the last of it is spilling out of the sides of his mouth and trickling down his neck. He hopes the tracts don’t smear the calligraphy on his skin. He looks around inconspicuously—he does not see the artist who yelled at him to take care, but he still refrains from wiping at his mouth.

The sounds of bodies pounding on other bodies begin to beat within his vessel. The djinn queen is getting closer to him, but she suddenly seems very far away. The dancers start spinning, but Castiel can’t tell if that’s part of the dance or because of the sudden inebriation he realizes is occurring to his vessel. His Grace pulses in agitation, but it feels like swimming through molasses to try and access it, so Cas just closes his eyes.

A warm hand is on his cheek, and—as he opens his eyes—another is pulling him to his feet. Castiel sways and tries to focus. The djinn queen gives a joyful laugh. She takes the crown of teeth from her head and places it in his hand at the same time as swiping the crown of flowers from his head. She grabs his noodle arm and raises it up.

“Put it on your head!” she shouts, pointing at his head as she fixes the flower crown jauntily on her own.

“Oh, um. Right.” Castiel slams the crown of teeth on his head—it was closer to his hand than he’d judged—and adjusts it to stay.

The djinn queen is looking at him, so he says, “So…uh. What exactly is this favor? This seems…um…ritualistic in nature. If I had to guess—” she claps her hands directly in his face.

“Now we dance! That is the favor that you will give to me. A dance at this celebration!”

She grabs his hand, twirls him awkwardly, and yanks him into the sea of serpentining bodies.

***

Castiel is rudely awakened by a jab of toe into his side. Curious. His does not need sleep, but there is a slight ache behind his eyes that informs him he didn’t sleep so much as “pass out.” He calls his Grace and the ache alleviates. He sits up from where he’d been lying in the dirt to squint up at the djinn who belongs to the offending toe.

It’s Mr. Too-Close-for-Comfort—because of course it is—and he’s looming over Castiel, holding a full bag.

“Get up, angel,” he says.

As Castiel stands he takes stock of himself—he’s still clothed, but the designs on his skin are no more than blue smears now; his crown is nowhere to be found, but there are a couple of crushed and bruised flowers stuck in his hair. What. The. Hell.

The djinn shoves the bag into Castiel’s chest, producing a slight oomph from him.

“Your prize for favoring the queen. Now leave. We have both honored our words. Let us not break them now due to lingering.”

Castiel looks around—he sees a mound of sleeping djinn in clumps all over the territory—but he does not see the Malikah herself.

“I…thank you.”

The djinn laughs at him.

“Have fun with your…quest. Do not forget that you are now bound to us of your own free will. She may yet call claim on that again.”

Castiel shifts the bag in his grasp as he turns to leave—it contains the sought-after fruit (which Cas is just now wondering how he’ll have to mojo though customs)—and heaves a full body sigh.

It would appear that he’s gotten married.

Again.


End file.
